(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a label and RFID tag issuing apparatus comprising a recording apparatus for recording information on a recording medium and an RFID tag reading/writing apparatus. The invention particularly relates to a production label and RFID tag issuing apparatus that issues a production label and an RFID tag, comprising a recording apparatus that records information on a recording medium to be affixed to a container used in factory automation (FA) process or other applications and an RFID tag reading/writing apparatus that can write to the RFID tag coupled with the recording medium part of the information recorded on the recording medium.
(2) Description of Related Art
Today, to manage articles, a bar-code and RFID tag are used in combination. Japanese patent application Kokai publication No. 2001-229344 describes a data processing apparatus that can convert data between bar-code data and RFID tag data and manage articles using the converted data. This data processing apparatus comprises an RFID tag reader/writer, a data converting means for converting data between bar-code data and RFID tag data, a bar-code reader, and a bar-code printer. The apparatus operates such that the data converting means converts bar-code data decoded from a bar-code that is read by a bar-code reader into RFID tag data, which is then written to an RFID tag, while the data converting means converts RFID tag data read from an RFID tag by the RFID tag reader/writer into bar-code data, which is then inputted to a printer and recorded. Thereby, for example, data of a bar-code recorded on a contained article can be registered in an RFID tag of a carried container, and data related to an article can be efficiently managed.
In a FA process, for example, a production article or articles such as personal ornaments contained in a container move between a plurality of work flow stages, at each of which an operator does his/her prescribed work picking up the articles from the container and puts them back to the container after finishing the work. In order to manage the traveling container and production articles therein, an RFID tag storing managing data and a production label recording the managing data are attached to one container so that the managing data can be electronically managed by using the RFID tag and the operator can visually confirm the production article by the production label.
In such a case, the managing data recorded in the production label on the container must correspond to the managing data stored in the RFID tag that is attached to the same container. However, the data processing apparatus described in Japanese patent application Kokai publication No. 2001-229344 is not structured such that a production label and an RFID tag are affixed to the same container wherein issuing of the production label containing managing data to be affixed to the container is related to issuing of an RFID tag containing managing data to be attached to the container. Therefore, a problem arises that an operator accidentally affixes a production label to a wrong container to which an RFID tag that does not correspond to the production label is attached.